Interview with Prismatic Games on Hex Heroes

A new party RTS game called Hex Heroes from Prismatic Games is currently campaigning on Kickstarter. Lucky for you, we got to have a nice interview with them about it. The game will fully utilize the GamePad, which could be promising for any Wii U owner. Check out Hex Heroes' Kickstarter here. If you're interest, you can go check out their Kickstarter, and possibly back the project.

Nintendo World Report (NWR): First off, please give us the lowdown on Hex Heroes for those that don't know.

Prismatic Games (PG): Hex Heroes blends the classic strategy elements found in RTS games like Starcraft and Age of Empires with the action you might find in Legend of Zelda or God of War. One person on the GamePad has a birds-eye view of the battlefield and carries out executive commands while leading their team. That team is comprised of your friends on the couch, who fight, explore, and harvest resources on the ground level. The game is both single-player and co-op.

NWR: I love the fact that you guys know that this is a game that Wii U owners will want, partially due to yourselves owning the system. What major reason will Wii U owners want this game?

PG: It's the reason they bought a Wii U. Let's be honest with ourselves, we didn't buy a Wii U to play Assassin's Creed or Call of Duty. We bought it because of the innovation the GamePad afforded. We're very excited to be taking up the mantle of bringing an experience that hasn't really been seen before to a platform that supports it so natively.

NWR: Thanks to you guys, I now love the term "Par-TS" (party RTS). Being the world's first game in that genre, you have a lot of ideas to toy with, I imagine. Is it a challenge to find the certain mechanics that will make this game work so well?

PG: It's our only challenge, really. We plan to release in April 2015 and most of that year, development will involve us playtesting the game and making it fun. We understand that harvesting resources doesn't innately sound engaging, but Team Fortress 2 has made being the medic or engineer fun, so we're confident we can deliver.

NWR: The game also features cameos from other games, such as Rusty from SteamWorld Dig, Juan from Guacamelee, and Max from Mutant Mudds. While there are plenty of awesome cameos already, were there others you guys were hoping to get in that didn't yet make the cut?

PG: Absolutely. We really had our hearts set on Shantae, Beck of Mighty Number 9, and, my personal favorite, Raz from Psychonauts. We actually have a tweet aimed at Notch asking for a Steve cameo that's reached 100 retweets - we'll see how that plays out.

NWR: How'd you guys score Grant Kirkhope (composer of Banjo Kazooie, Donkey Kong 64 and others) to do the composition? That sample on the Kickstarter was getting me pumped.

PG: Being an indie developer gave me the clout needed to work the channels and get in touch with him. We spoke over the course of a couple of months about bringing him on and when we finally met at GDC we made it official. He's a really cool and down-to-earth guy.

NWR: Finally, if the game doesn't quite reach the Kickstarter goal, what will that mean exactly for Hex Heroes? Please tell me it will come to Wii U no matter what.

PG: If the Kickstarter campaign does not succeed, we as indie developers have a couple of options. We can turn to publishers for funding, but this means we greatly compromise our initial vision and we lose the sense of community Kickstarter affords us. That's even if a publisher will pick up an experimental Wii U game. Another option is working out of our basements - this isn't ideal by any means. If we have to self-fund in our spare time, it will take a very long time and we don't have the means to afford Grant's music. If I may add: If you own a Wii U, you owe it to yourself to back this game. Hex Heroes will make full use of the gamepad in ways Nintendo promised to do. If you've never backed something on Kickstarter before, your money isn't spent unless the campaign succeeds; so please show your support. Thank you.

A big helping of thank you to Prismatic Games for the interview!

Talkback

I hope they can get the huge push they need in their last six days of funding. It really is a wonderful idea and I wish that Wii U owners would support an innovative use of the Gamepad. It saddens me to think this won't happen.

I hope they can get the huge push they need in their last six days of funding. It really is a wonderful idea and I wish that Wii U owners would support an innovative use of the Gamepad. It saddens me to think this won't happen.

I've already backed $45, myself.

I hope so, too. It looks like it will happen either way, but it would be best (and easiest) if they reached the goal.

Last day, and the goal is so close to being reached! The game looks fantastic - go check out the video if you haven't already.

Hopefully this makes the cut, but it's easy to understand where Ceric is coming from. Video game KickStarter projects are especially hard to back because they take such a long time to come out and are relatively high risk (in my opinion).